‘I admire what he did with his life’

Kabir Bedi mourns the death of Sir Roger Moore

Kabir Bedi starred alongside Sir Roger Moore in the 1983 Bond movie Octopussy. As the villainous Gobinda, Bedi remains the only other Indian actor to have a prominent role in a James Bond movie besides Vijay Amritraj, Bond’s Indian ally in the same film.

Yet, long before he acted in Octopussy, Bedi was already a known name in Italy where he played the eponymous Sandokan in the six-part Italian television series. So when he walked on the sets of the movie, Bedi was a familiar face for Moore’s (then) wife Luisa Mattioli. “She was Italian and she knew of me (because of Sandokan),” Kabir Bedi told GQ. “When she introduced me to him, Roger was polite and very respectful. We had a wonderful sit-down and would end up spending considerable time together on the sets in Pinewood Studios (in England) and later in Udaipur.”

“We spent five months shooting the movie and had a lot of opportunities to be together. At first, Roger was a very reserved person, but eventually he opened up and I discovered that he could be very warm. For most part, Roger had a very questioning view of the world. And yet he was also very traditionally British in several ways.

“When we started out, I didn’t think of him as an icon. It would be a status he would achieve by sheer hard work. I will always admire what he did with his life.”